Two Cheeks To The Wind
by tielan
Summary: John's in an inconvenient situation. Luckily, his team is there to rescue him!


**Two Cheeks To The Wind**

Even naked and handcuffed to the bedpost, John had never been so glad to see his team in his life.

Teyla was the first one into the room, running point. The sight of her slipping between the polished doors eased back the sudden erratic thump of his heartbeat when he'd thought his captor was coming to claim him.

She took one look and her eyebrows rose. John felt himself flush as her gaze skimmed over his naked body, an embarrassment that not even the flicker of appreciation in her expression could cool.

"He's here," she murmured back through the crack in the door. "Conscious, but...inconveniently positioned." Her eyes didn't leave John's, the quirk of her mouth giving a wicked glint to her gaze as she began to cross the floor to the four-poster bed in the centre of the room.

"What do you mean, conscious but inconveni--" Rodney shoved the door open, took one look at John, and then turned to look pointedly elsewhere. "What happened to you?"

"Speak a little louder," Ronon said, closing the door behind him, "Maybe they'll hear you in the great hall." His eyes raked over John, and white teeth flashed in a broad grin before he turned to press his ear to the door, considerately giving John a little privacy.

"I was drugged."

"Thinking with your dick again, eh?" Rodney huffed snidely as Teyla climbed onto the bed.

John didn't answer, too busy trying to angle himself away from her observation.

It was embarrassing enough to be helpless like this - especially when Rodney was right about how he'd ended up here, although he hadn't_exactly_ been thinking with his dick. Plus, he'd had dreams involving Teyla and beds and nakedness - of course, in the dreams she was usually naked, too, and they were a far cry from the tense reality of their situation now. Still, as she examined the cuffs with a frown on her face, he couldn't help the tightening in his gut as her fingers turned his wrists this way and that, and her spicy scent caught at his senses.

"Ronon, your coat," Teyla said, absently tugging on the handcuffs. "Rodney, please pass it over and give John your sidearm. You have sustained no injury?"

John's answer was forestalled by Ronon's call from the door. "He looks pretty fine to me."

"Shouldn't you be watching for the guards?" Rodney snapped as he brought the coat, holding it up like a screen. "I hate to break up the party, but sooner or later, someone's going to notice that the guards are down and come after us."

There was a shout down the corridor.

"Like now?" John asked, then caught his breath as Teyla flipped up the safety on her P-90. "Teyla?"

"If you relax, it will hurt less," she said, her mouth twitching with suspicious amusement. John's heart had time to thump once before she pulled his hands back, forcing the chain between the cuffs taut around the bedpost. Two shots into the links of the handcuffs, and John was free, if still naked and with his heart racing.

"Coat." He yanked it out of Rodney's hands and shouldered it on, immensely grateful for the coverage. Cultivating a sense of leadership and authority was much more difficult when naked. A moment later, he had a sidearm and was checking the ammunition. "Exit plan?"

Teyla was checking the gardens below. "We came in by a side door in the palace," she began, starting back towards the centre of the room. "If the alarm is not raised..."

Shouts sounded distantly down the corridor.

"Alarm's raised," Ronon said.

"Oh, brilliant deduction, Watson."

Ronon ignored him, closing the door and grabbing a nearby cord with which to bind the handles.

"The garden is clear," Teyla advised, turning on her heel and making for the balcony. "There is a drop, but it is nothing." A moment later, she'd vaulted over the balustrade, as lithe and elegant as a bird on the wing.

"Show-off," muttered Rodney as he peered over. "You know, I'll probably break my ankle."

John grimaced - he wasn't so sure of his own ability to navigate the drop, but he'd never tell Rodney so. "Then we'll get Ronon to carry you," he said. "It's that, or you can have my place on the bed with the handcuffs." And with that, John judged the distance from the balcony to the ground, picked a landing spot without rocks, and jumped.

A moment later, his bare feet squelched in loam, and he picked his way out of the garden, pulling Ronon's coat around him and avoiding Teyla's amused glance back at him. In the room above, he could hear the steady fire of Ronon's gun with the slight pause between shots as the targets were sighted.

Rodney landed a moment later and stumbled out of the garden, cursing. Then Ronon sailed over the balustrade like an action hero in motion, his dreadlocks streaming out behind him, his weapon held in his hand. The only thing he lacked, John thought, was his leather coat flaring in the wind of his passage.

That coat flapped around his legs as they picked their way through the gardens on their way to the Gate. John tugged at the edges and tightened the belt, ignoring the rough chuckle that emitted from Ronon as he came up alongside.

"Should we ask what happened?"

"No," said John. He wasn't going to endure Rodney's mockery or Ronon's teasing all the way to the Stargate, and Teyla looked like she was biting back a laugh - or a sigh - as she navigated between flowerbeds and paths, ornamental screen hedges and windbreaks.

"You know where we're going, right?"

John figured it was the wrong question around the time Teyla gave him a frowning look that more or less said, _Perhaps it is unwise to ask questions when you are the one running around naked beneath Ronon's coat with handcuffs still on your wrists, John._

They paused behind a series of ornamental bushes to watch the guards running this way and that. In the warm afternoon light, John felt ridiculously exposed. Okay, _even more_ ridiculously exposed than he already was.

"We're gonna need cover," Ronon muttered.

"Isn't that why you're here?" Rodney asked sarcastically.

Teyla peered through the screen of wide leaves to the path that led out of the gardens and the the Stargate. "I thought he was here to look pretty." She grinned as Ronon poked her with the muzzle of his weapon - a gleam of wicked laughter that reflected from her expression as she glanced at John.

"Nope. Sheppard's job," Ronon pronounced with a quick sweep of the rapidly clearing area.

Teyla's mouth twitched as Rodney snorted scornfully. "You need your eyes checked."

"His legs are good."

"I think we should focus on the _situation_," said John pointedly. The tips of his ears were burning like they'd been in sunlight too long.

Ronon grinned but quirked his head at Teyla. "We break for it?"

"In a moment."

Before John had time to be miffed that Ronon was behaving as though Teyla was in charge, the last of the guards vanished into the scrub around them. "_Now_," Teyla said in tones that brooked no disobedience.

Ronon led the way with long strides, and Teyla pushed John out ahead of her. He clutched Ronon's coat around him and ran for the gate, hearing Rodney's shout of alarm behind him, and Teyla's injunction. "Keep going!"

Barefoot, at full pelt, knowing he was at a distinct disadvantage so far as weaponry and clothing went, John still stopped and turned to see what was happening behind. He didn't see much more than Rodney's face, alarmingly close, before his team-mate crashed into him. Then, all he was seeing was sky and the top of Rodney's head.

"The hell..."

"Why did you stop?" Rodney yelled as he rolled over and half-staggered to his feet. "I think I've done my knee in..." John grabbed Teyla's proffered hand as Ronon stood behind and wide of them, covering their asses.

John refused to think that Ronon had already covered his ass once today.

"Rodney!" Teyla intervened, glancing back over her shoulder. "Dial the gate."

"My knee--"

"Then limp," she said. "Or would you rather find yourself naked and chained to a bedpost as we found John?"

"You could at least say please!"

"_Please._" Teyla turned and opened fire on the approaching guards, joining Ronon, whose mouth was set in the fixed concentration of a man intent on his aim.

John positioned himself behind and beside Teyla and sighted along the barrel of Rodney's weapon. In spite of his state of undress, the weight of the gun was comfortable in his hand, the situation familiar. He might be naked beneath the coat, but he had his team fighting beside him, preparing their exit from this planet. Any residual discomfort and embarrassment faded as he fell in alongside his team into habitual patterns of behaviour: protection and teamwork, naked or clothed.

Behind them, the wormhole connected. "Come on!" Rodney yelled.

"You first," Teyla said to John. "We will follow."

"Bossy," he commented, and received a roll of the eyes in response as he turned and went.

Less than minute later they were all back in the vivid blues and greens of Atlantis' gateroom, with no more inconvenience than John's balls freezing on the trip through.

- **fin** -


End file.
